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You know way perhaps the my lack of scientific knowledge in this field led to my using the minerals strictly as the form of artistic expression. The second largest craft hobby in America today is said to be rock counting with all of its branches of interest some of which are Jim cutting making jewelry and the collection of gemstones rocks minerals and fossils. This universal hobby has grown to astonishing proportions in the last 25 years and show signs of even more rapid growth as the need develops for more people to pursue more leisure time activities due to the fact that they're working fewer hours have more days off and get more vacation time. Rocks and minerals are specimens of extreme importance to the rock. However
most people do not realize the important role for rocks and minerals play in everyday living. For example fluorite used in toothpaste and clothing. This series of programs is designed to give an overall picture of the rock around to offer encouragement to the newcomer in this hobby and present information of general interest to everyone. All of this will be examined as we explore the world of the rock. Today's programme is entitled. Photographing minerals. The narrator is Len folk. It's quite probable that even experienced rock hounds and geologists would say What is it. Upon seeing the vivid colors and spectacular designs in any one of the photographs comprising the minerals magnified exhibit which has been created by photographer Jack Carrick of Westfield New Jersey with some of them looking like sky rockets bursting others appearing to be the
utmost in abstract art. These pictures have travelled about the country appearing at various exhibitions and many people now have copies of them in their homes and in their offices. For Mr Cat who is not really a rock hound. All of this began rather unexpectedly in the course of his work which involves the photography of unusual subjects. I really can't say as I don't consider myself to be a rockhound. I have met many rock and in the New Jersey area and have had the pleasure of meeting some geologists since I was able to create the photographs that we're going to discuss. I became interested in rocks and minerals strictly through very accident. I would say however our family that my two brothers and myself have collected fossils which we have found in and around the New Jersey area for the last
few years none of the fossils were let's say museum pieces but there's a certain satisfaction when you find one. I am one of those fortunate individuals in life that I can say that their business and their profession and their hobby is all wrapped up into one neat package. I am very happy to say that I get paid for doing exactly what I enjoy doing and that's creating scientific photographs I have specialized for the last 25 years in the recording of transfinite phenomena. I have been employed by the smoke shop and dome research laboratories located here in a roadway in New Jersey for this period of time.
And working in close support to the various scientific disciplines I have been able to learn a tremendous amount about photographing rather odd specimens. Many of which you would not think of normally wanting to photograph. And this is actually how the exhibit minerals magnified came into being. I had completed a set of about 50 photographs that was used by Smithsonian Institution as a traveling exhibition for Mark and company. He during the exhibit in Washington D.C. Dr. George Switzer the director of mineralogical for the Smithsonian Institution stopped by and asked me a question and I was a little embarrassed he said Jack. Did you ever
think of photographing a mineral and I said No I said. Normally the only thing I do in them is throw rocks at the kids or in a pond and he said well stop to his office some day and he'd show me some. Now I've been at this point in life like most people you rock through museums and you gathers things and what you're interested in and other things which you aren't particularly interested in just perhaps a little bit will brush you off so I walked over to Dr. switchers laboratory and he had taken the liberty to withdraw from his files half a dozen or so samples of minerals which he gave to me and told me to take it back and see what I could do and make a attractive looking photograph of these. Now I had never photographed a mineral before. And so I approached the subject of making mental photographs completely as a novelist. I was very thrilled by what I
was able to see and you know way perhaps the my lack of scientific knowledge in this field led to my using the minerals strictly as the form of artistic expression. I made a test set of photographs which were submitted to Smithsonian and they like them. And then I proceeded to collect and prepare and specimens so that we were able to have approximately 50 photographs which have been used for the last three years as a traveling exhibit going to colleges and art museums throughout the United States. I have a second exhibit on the same subject which is loaned to high schools and junior colleges. The exhibit runs displayed at Smithsonian. There are
there is a duplicate exhibit up in the mineral wing of the institution. The original set of photographs that I produced were displayed at the GSA yes meeting held in Florida in nineteen sixty four. The original set was approximately oh 25 pictures. The reception that these received by the geologist gave me the necessary enthusiasm to go ahead and try and produce an additional set of another 25 for the GSA meeting that was held in Kansas City. I'm very pleased to say that the second exhibit was. Pretty well received by the geology geologist again.
These photographs are used by the geologist as a decorative piece in their offices and in their homes because many of these minerals have been the specialty of a particular geologist. I been gathering these I didn't really decide on any particular mineral. I took mineral samples and looked them over and decided the ones that I would like to use just let it just strictly from the artistic point of view. The mineral. Minerals used borrowed from the various
individuals that have micro mounts in their collection. We had quite a few colossal flops in that many of the minerals that we. Thought would look very nice didn't turn out that way at all. And I must admit that all of our pictures aren't good. However the ones that we were able to get I was very surprised and pleased with the results and so have many many people from the universities and the art world in the United States and in Canada. I had never seen any mineral photographs of this type prior to my taking these because as I have said before I was not at all
interested in minerals or photographing of minerals. The original specimens that were used are chips of minerals that are produced by taking a hammer and chipping down into the mineral and then using a magnifying glass and finding a perfect crystal of the particular mineral that you're interested in. I usually end up with a piece about the size of a grain of sand or perhaps the size of a grain of rice but certainly not much larger. This specimen is then put in a micro mount box in which you keep it and it also acts as a filing box and keeps the specimen clean. Now if you can envision taking
something about the size of a grain of rice you have to mount it someway so that using some do go cement and little bear some wood or the piece of wood from a stick match and you cut it to the length that you want and then you cement your crystal on to the end of it with a little Duko cement or any other cement of that nature and then you paint this little piece of wood jet black in the inside of your little micromanaged box is also painted flat black and then you mount your specimen in the center of the small plastic box. These boxes are about a half inch square with a removable top. Then the specimen has now filed away. This is a much easier way of collecting specimens by the
way than. Where collecting her specimens because you can have thousands of specimens in a small file cabinet. They are just as beautiful when viewed through the microscope as if you were looking at a whole specimen. As far as the lighting goes of a mineral specimen you don't really need fancy lighting. You can use one strobe in a reflector or you can use two stripes or you can use three strokes. You will find that if you're able to put a. Collecting lands on the front of your strobe and gather the light so that you can focus all of your light down into a small area. You have a better lighting ratio than you would if you just try to bring a large my sched up close to a very very small subject there's an awful waste of
light when you figure that you're trying to photograph something in a half inch square which was the area that your lighting but the picture area is going to be that's a the size of our little wheat or rice grain. So therefore you would be best to have one of your light concentrated into a small area of approximately a half inch. This would give you a shorter exposure time since vibrations are usually one of the big problems in making successful thought of micro graphs. You can also use plain tungsten light. You can use flood lights if you'd like or you can use these spotlights or the small tester lights that are sold for desk use make excellent lights for photo Mac groggery macro graffiti which is what we might class this under
because the letter micrograph is is the type of photography one would do when making. Photographs of microscope slides in the magnification range of or ten to twelve hundred diameters the macro photography is the photography of specimens in the range of 1 to 1 to 10 to 1. Now part of our specimens were what we term micro mounts which were the small samples in little plastic boxes and the other half of our exhibit is a group of photographs that were produced from thin layer sections. Now to make a thin layer
section one would take a diamond saw and saw a small piece of the mineral office than is he could possibly saw it. And he would take this very thin piece let's say maybe as thin as you might saw it the first time through on a dime and we all might be an eighth of an inch. And then you would cement it with a good cement to a piece of glass preferably a microscope slide and you would then place this. On a lapping wheel. And you would slowly lap. The material down on until it was extremely thin. Now you can actually take any mineral and including a piece of granite and by a slow work on an abrasion we get it down to the area of 30 microns or perhaps a little
less at this point. If you were to hold the glass slide up to the light you would be able to more or less see through your specimen. It then is removed from the rough lapping wheel to a fine lapping wheel and a finer. The amount of grinding is done to smooth off the upper surface. You can then put a mounting medium such as Canadian bar some layer and a cover slip on it and you have a finished microscope slide from which one could make photo micro graphs of thin specimens. When making photo micrograph the thin specimens one will find that it's much better to use polarized light to produce the photographs. If you just use normal white light
as it is termed you would find that you have black and gray and little brown areas. However if you place a polarizer onto the microscope condenser and you place an analyzer at the microscope eyepiece. You will then find that your. Subject springs to life with tremendous beauty caused by the polarization of the light being transmitted through the specimen. Using this technique is the reason for the sparkling colors that one sees in the thin layer sections. Now this is a different method of collecting minerals. By making a collection of thin air slides one again could have thousands and thousands of specimens. You know a very small file
cabinet. Now most of these photographs that I made were made in the studio. However if one wishes to take his camera and tripod in the field he would find that at a particular dump he would be able to find specimens that he would like let's say to photograph but not necessarily to collect and bring home. And he could set his tripod up and using the sun or using a portable strobe light. These photographs could be produced directly in the field. It's really not necessary to do it in the studio. I find it simpler or it's easier for me to do these in the studio because I can do when I'm in the mood and have the time to do. If you're in the field you usually want to spend more of your time collecting specimens than in making photographs of them.
The pictures that. We produced from color transparencies were blown up to 16 by 20 in size and positive effect color prints produced these kind of prints were made to a 16 by 20 or a 20 by 24 size because my thought was that they would make artistic decorations in place of watercolor drawings and oil paintings that you might have around your home or in your office. In addition to the Michael Manson thin layer slides Mr. Jack Camp has photographed large mineral specimens also background and lighting are very important here to many of you. Rock accounts have. Very very beautiful
gross specimens that are quite large and some of you may wish to create a series of slides on these large specimens and I'll try and make a few suggestions along this line. Let's. Say for instance you have a piece that might be six inches across and it might be five inches or eight inches high and it might be a foot wide for a large crystalline subject. What I would suggest you do is you place this subject down on a suitable background Now let's assume that the crystal is glass like in color and you would like to photograph it. You may put it on a piece of black velvet. You could use a. Plain blue.
Blanket from the baby's bed which makes an excellent background now. Place the blanket or the velvet onto a small card table and. Bring the end of the velvet up so that it is about three feet higher than the card table and supported on. A broom or anything else that will hold it up in the air actually you can Scotch Tape it to the roll. Have the cloth come down it and that curved dangle and go across the top of the card table and have the card table about three or four feet from the wall itself. This will give you a very smooth curve in back so that when you make a finished photograph there is not a straight horizontal line going to the back end of your specimen. I would then take my large specimen and mount it up a little bit off of the black cloth with most anything that you'd care to put anything that amounted up with
including clay or paper or even sand of man and sand will make a very regular bed to hold the specimen in almost any angle that you want. Just make sure that the same isn't going to show in your finished photograph. You could also make the mound of sand underneath all of the cloth and. Lay the cloth over the sand and put the cloth on top and put the specimen on top of the cloth. This way your specimen would be up a little tiny bit higher than the base of the. Table. Now I would suggest in this case that you consider using two lights. Remember that in large specimens the Lord has put a sign up in the sky and it's the main source of light so that when you're doing a large mineral specimen try and have one main source of light. Therefore only one shadow.
It's very distracting I feel to look at a still life subject and see many shadows going in different directions indicating the photographer took liberties on nature and used many different light sources. How can Iraq then use these pictures to best advantage. Mr Cat has many suggestions which would result in lasting enjoyment. Now as to some possible uses of these mineral photographs for the average rock hound the first thing that most of us think about is to make a series of slides that begin that could be used for projection purposes. Well this is one use of your material. However let's give a little a lot of thought to some of the other rather unique uses you have produced a rather pretty photograph at this point and you like it
now. First you could use it as a slide. Secondly you could have it. Enlarged to a 4 by 5 or an 8 by 10 transparency and you could put a small fluorescent light in back of it and you would have a transom illuminated piece for your office or for your home. These transparencies which are lighted from the rear are extremely attractive. They last a long time and they are quite a conversation piece in an office or a home transparencies can be made up to almost any physical size that you might care to name. Now another use would be to make once a large color prints like we did for framing in display in the office or home. However let's think of what our ancestors used to do a little bit and
they made miniatures and you will find that many of these rock photographs when printed will make you extremely attractive miniatures in the two by three sizes or of the four by five size or even smaller. If you put them in the proper type of frame some rock specimens one frame in the old brass antique frames that you might find around are exceedingly attractive pieces. Another use for this material would be to take your photographic print and dampen it down a bit and use a little paper based or material called Borden's glue or thin down and wet mount your spece your photograph to the base of a lamp and a lamp shade onto a door or any other place that you feel would look attractive. As far as displaying your mineral print is concerned and you just give this little
thought and another one that comes to my mind is a series of these photographs could be placed in the center of Ari. Cocktail table and a piece of glass put over the top and you would have a very attractive display your cocktail table wouldn't be as heavy as if you made a hollowed table with the original rock specimens and you may not have room for that and you could certainly get many small photographs onto the top of a cocktail table. You can go wrong and think of your own uses for these photographs but my personal feeling is that a picture we made isn't really a good picture. Well it's the person making the picture can figure out how other people can use and enjoy a photograph of a photograph that's made and put away in a file or in an album. It's a very good thing to have but it's something that only you can enjoy It's like going to your safe
deposit box to count your pennies. You enjoy it but nobody else can share it. And I feel that one of the fun in making photographs of minerals and other specimens is the fact that when I'm finished I can share what I know. So I know what I have discovered with my friends and colleagues and. You will find a lot of your friends will come up and say what is it. And this is the greatest compliment I think that you can have is to have a person stop into your home or office and look at something on the wall and you have really made him ask the question What is it we wish to thank Mr. Jack can't the Westfield New Jersey who produced the photographs in the minerals magnified exhibit. This has been another in the series of programs exploring the world of the rock out.
The narrator was Leonard felt this series is produced by WBL in the service of the public library of Nashville and Davidson County in Nashville Tennessee. Next week Mrs. Falk will discuss the fascinating aspects of this hobby in a program entitled. The Smithsonian our nation's finest exhibit. This is Charles Mitchell. This is NPR National Educational Radio Network.
Series
World of the Rockhound
Episode Number
21
Producing Organization
WPLN
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/500-4f1mmh8r
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Description
Series Description
World of the Rockhound is a twenty-four part program about rock collecting produced by WPLN, the service of the public library of Nashville and Davidson County, and Nashville, Tennessee. Episodes focus on topics specific to rock hounding, like collecting, cutting, displaying, and creating artwork from rocks, gemstones, and fossils. The program also discusses broader topics related to geology, like earth science, consumer interests, and professional uses of rocks and minerals.
Genres
Documentary
Topics
Education
Environment
Nature
Science
Antiques and Collectibles
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:30:18
Embed Code
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Credits
Producing Organization: WPLN
AAPB Contributor Holdings
University of Maryland
Identifier: 69-42-1 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:29:00
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Citations
Chicago: “World of the Rockhound; 21,” University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-4f1mmh8r.
MLA: “World of the Rockhound; 21.” University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-4f1mmh8r>.
APA: World of the Rockhound; 21. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-4f1mmh8r